Pickup trucks comprising both cabs for transporting people and open beds for transporting goods have existed for many decades. Often, racks are used in the beds of such pickup trucks to facilitate the transport of longer objects, such as pipes, lumber and ladders. These racks are often referred to as “ladder racks.” One of the benefits of such racks is the ability to use the area above the truck's cab for storage, eliminating the need for longer objects to protrude from the truck's bed, which can create a safety hazard. Additionally, such racks can hold objects above the floor of the truck's bed leaving it free to store other items. Ladder racks are typically semi-permanent fixtures that are bolted to the truck and are not easily removed.
Pickup truck's are commonly used to carry large and heavy objects in their beds, which would not fit easily into other vehicles because a truck's bed is not constrained by a roof. However, the floor of a typical truck bed is located at a height above the rear axle of the truck, which is significantly above ground level. This makes loading large or heavy items into to the truck bed difficult, if not impossible without significant assistance.
Attempts have been made to provide devices to be installed in trucks that provide loading and unloading assistance. These devices can use swivel arms to swing the object over the side or back of the bed that are hydraulically driven by pistons attached to the vehicle chassis, or mechanically driven by a winch. See for example Rinderknecht U.S. Pat. No. 6,688,837. These arms comprising such inventions can rotate about the attachment point on the chassis and provide the lifting power necessary to lift objects into or out of the truck. Other devices are attached to the back of a truck's bed and work like small, hydraulically-driven elevators. See for example Zrostlik U.S. Pat. No. 4,787,809. However, neither of these existing lifting devices have the capacity to provide additional storage on the truck when not in use as loading device. In fact, most of the existing devices reduce the amount of storage space available in the truck bed. Furthermore, neither of these devices can be easily removed from the truck.
One existing device, Gunderson U.S. Pat. No. 5,743,702, does have the capacity to work as both a ladder rack and a loading device. However, this device relies upon a sliding rail system, whereas the present device uses an entirely different mechanism. The present device can be more stable than the Gunderson design and can accommodate tool boxes and other objects commonly found on trucks that may be interfered with by the Gunderson device.
What is needed is a lifting device having the capacity to both load and unload large and heavy objects into and out of a pickup truck's bed that is also capable of providing a ladder rack for additional storage space when not being used as a lifting device. Additionally, the device should be easy to either connect or disconnect from the truck as desired.